I completed W4D1b of the 100 Pushups routine on Monday. They’re getting hard again! Had a twinge of a headache after this set of sets, but nothing like the pounding ones I had a while back.

Tim taught the class last night, since Damian is off in Cali learning new stuff. Knee on belly was the topic. It was basically the fundamentals class mashed together with the spin around armbar. We wrapped up with a kimura variant from a failed spin as well, which was new to me.

Per a discussion I had a while back, I’ve decided to focus on my game from guard and grip breaking and fighting. Big Mike tooled me because of his grips last week, so for the next couple of weeks, that’s what I’m going to focus on.

Afterwards I rolled a couple of times with Tim. Either he’s taking it easy on me, I’m getting better, or some combination of both. He tapped me, but it took a while these times. I did escape his mount, then him having my back the Saulo way, and ended up on top with him in turtle guard…which he promptly rolled me before I could stabilize into the start of the clock choke. I was mostly happy with the way things went against him. Given that he’s a blue belt, he’s going to tool me if he wants to.

Pete was next. We’ve rolled before I think, but he’s been gone for a couple of months. He’s a two stripe white belt, like me, a little bigger though. I pulled guard and started breaking grips and watching for a sweep opportunity. None came before he passed and squished me flat with head control. And man does that suck. I really need to work on escaping that, but he was heavy and tight enough where I couldn’t move my arms to get them into the right position to try. All I could do was prevent him from mounting me, which he did eventually. Heavy and tight again. I almost got the upa off, but mistimed it and he cross choked me. We went again, and I was on top this time in his open guard. He controlled me so well, I didn’t have the strength, leverage, or apparently technique to break his grips…so I got swept, mounted and choked again.

I don’t know what it was about it, but it put me in a pretty sour mood. So I skipped fundamentals and went home. Later I tried to verbalize the “why” part of my frustration, and really couldn’t. Having literally laid awake last night thinking about it, I still don’t have a good explanation. I (in theory) know the escapes from side control and mount. It’s the practice of actually doing them that’s hard. And it’s supposed to be hard, those are dominate positions. Part of the answer is “you can’t get un-punched”, IE, avoid getting in those spots in the first place.

So, I’m revising my goals for the foreseeable future to: Improve my escapes from mount and side control and maintaining guard via grip fighting.

I predicted that I’d be “frustrated beyond belief at some point” in my very first post. It appears that it’s arrived. Now the question becomes: “How will I deal with this?”

My neck/upper back is still funky, so I went to chiropractor yesterday. Couple of things out of wack, so he adjusted me some and I’m due back on Friday. Doesn’t hurt, but I can tell things aren’t sitting right.